1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of laundry and other article-drying equipment and, more specifically, to dryer-conditioners used in the commercial laundry industry.
2. Description of the Prior Art
An overall view of the prior art in industrial laundry dryer-conditioners, often referred to in the industry as merely "dryers", can be had by referring to my earlier-issued U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,604,313, 2,643,463, 3,443,323, and 3,861,865. The dryers described in those patents and industrial dryers in general require large volumes of air having a temperature in the tumbler in the range of 300.degree.-350.degree. F, in addition to providing the tumbling action to the laundry to achieve rapid but safe drying. In the present state of the art, the "washing" is generally independent of the "drying", or "conditioning", and each operation utilizes separate and detached apparatus, wherein the wet articles are transported from the washing apparatus to the dryer, in some convenient form such as "cakes" or "batches" of wet articles, and loaded therein to start the drying cycle. While the loading is under way, the dryer remains inoperative. Once loaded, however, the dryer would be operated until the load was dry or properly conditioned, after which the dryer would again remain inoperative while the finished laundry was removed and another load added, thus repeating the cycle.
However, the advent of continuous-flow, high-production industrial washing apparatus, in which laundry is added and extracted continuously, has created the necessity for more advanced industrial dryers that will automatically accommodate the continuous output flow of wet articles as they are being emitted from such washing apparatus.